Rod Bluh says this in his weekly adver column:
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[/float] No surprises here then.
Although it's patently obvious from Swindonlinkman's post above that Councillor Pajak's new motion is intended to seek support for a
referendum which would allow the Swindon electorate to express a preference for the type of leadership
it thinks Swindon Borough Council, and therefore
they, the voters should have....I'm left with the impression that Rod & Co have decided that, as far as the council is concerned, they will decide the issue on our behalf
again this evening.
As much as Rod and his colleagues might like to settle this definitively at tonight's council, it is not actually within their power to do so. The Local Government Act empowers Swindons voters to make this choice regardless of the obstacles, spin and rhetoric the party politicists place in their way.
I'll repeat this again, (and will do so as many times as needed): Those of us who are campaigning for a referendum on the issue are doing so because the voters of Swindon have already been
unfairly denied the opportunity to make this choice in 2001. What we wish to encourage is an informed debate which begins with an examination of the process by which Cllr's Mike Bawden, Sue Bates and Mike Evemy managed to change the councils own constitution
without a council debate.
It is possible that our council is operating a leadership model for which it has no proper or fair mandate. It is possible that, at some future point, we could ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to review the councils 2001 decision, but at this point we would much prefer that our Councillors take an honest and in-depth look at the councils past actions, and admit that what happened was simply wrong, unfair and did not best serve local democracy in Swindon.
Unfortunately, what we are seeing from our elected representatives is a flat refusal to discuss the 2001 events and an unseemly political scramble to rush past any discussion of them. Put simply, I think they believe that they can adopt a central-government attitude of ignoring inconvenient truths and weaving a defensive blanket out of half-truths and moody statistics, none of which counter the basic and central truth that this issue is wholly owned by the electorate and it is they, the electorate who will decide whether to debate, vote on and adopt, or not, an Elected Mayor.
Politicians are quick enough to beat a path to your doorstep and your vote at election times but, where matters of democracy are concerned they remain remarkably reluctant to listen or talk to you for the next four years. Fair enough, this is one situation where democracy and law empowers voters to act unilaterally.
Anyway, to Rods article....
I like Rod and I have great respect for him as a person, but as a politician he's begining to sound increasingly flatulent, nervously so.
He is quite right to request we divorce BoJo from any discussion of Elected Mayors. Boris is the Mayor of an administrative
region, not a town, and as such is an irrelevance to us, albeit an amusing one.
Rod's reference to Swindon town football club is totally lost on me and using the
resurgent Swindon Speed Camera debate as an indication that local Councillors are more 'media worthy' than Elected Mayors is a piece of spin so flimsy that even Alistair Campbell would cringe at it. TS readers will probably recall that when Cllr's Peter Greenhalgh and Andy James first raised the possibility of withdrawing from the Wiltshire Safety Camera Partnership the story was
'done to death' locally, but nationally speaking it completely flopped.
It was, I suggest, a dramatic 'own goal' by South Swindon MP Anne Snelgrove which catapulted the story into eye of the national media. Anne thought it would be a decently heavy stick to beat the Tory councillors with, ('Playing Politics With People Lives' was her central theme), and the media lapped it up. She seems to have lost the argument, but the fact remains that it was
an MP's involvement that grabbed the media's attention, not a West Swindon local councillor. Peter became, using his own words, 'a bit embarrassed'. A reluctant hero perhaps, but to describe this as what a 'powerful force local politicians can be', is stretching it Rod. Annie miscalculated and the local Tories reaped the unexpected media exposure of an unplanned but lucky break, end of.
Rod also asserts that it's a short hop from being 'resolute' to becoming dictatorial. Maybe so, but he then tries to underpin this assertion by highlighting the 'danger' of a 'powerful' Elected Mayor serving a four year term of public service, during which the other councillors can't remove him, or her, from office. There are several problems with this argument, (not least of which is that Rod
also argues that the Government hasn't given elected Mayors
enough powers!).
Rod inadvertently but starkly illustrates how 'accountability' means a very different different thing to politicians than it does to voters. Voters want their leaders to be accountable to
them, not their party political colleagues. Politicians think being accountable to their colleagues makes them accountable to the entire electorate. It obviously doesn't, but that won't stop them claiming that it does.
When a council leader or cabinet member says they are 'accountable' to the town, what this
actually means is that they are accountable to their party political colleagues. It is they who appoint and remove each other from a leader or cabinet position, not the electorate. If they behave in such a way that the electorate wish to remove them, they must wait until the next election to do so, and even then
only the voters of the single ward which voted for them can remove them. Is this accountable to the entire town?, it plainly isn't. It's worth noting that local councillors also serve
four year terms, during which the electorate can't remove them either.
Our Members of Parliament, Anne Snelgrove and Michael Wills....both elected for
four year terms, hold considerably more power than either the leader of the council or an elected mayor, neither is, or can be held accountable by the entire town until a general election is called....but we're hearing no complaint about the power they hold or the length of their terms from Rod...despite the fact that most of his cabinet privately agree that one of them crossed the line from resolute to dictatorial a long time back......so no, I don't think the 'Four Year Term' argument works from the point of view of the average voter, although it's obviously an attractive one from a party-political and self-interested perspective.
Rod has a friend who is doing a thesis on elected Mayors and I'm assuming that this friend is the source for many of the statistics Rod has produced. I haven't checked Rods figures because, as is popularly accepted, statistics can be presented in many different ways to suit many different arguments...which makes me think of Benjamin Disraeli's famous quote: 'There's Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics', (later popularised by Mark Twain).
What I will suggest is that a smoke screen of figures is being laid down to support x, y and z arguments, but what isn't being acknowledged here, and what Rod won't want to admit, is that Councils can, (and already have done),
change their constitutions in multiple ways to accomodate a new leadership structure,
including the length of term an elected mayor would serve. Rods attempt to focus readers minds on 'four years' is a hopeful but transparent piece of spin which is utterly derailed by all the other instances of public servants serving four year terms in office which he, and his colleagues, apparently find quite acceptable. When it suits eh?
This is nice...
My core belief is in strong, representative local self-government and I believe that is best guaranteed by the present system.'
...and I believe that Rod does actually believe this, and while Rod is leader of the council I'm sure he'll do a good job, but, let's not forget that it was
also the current leadership system that saw Labour leader Sue Bates and her cabinet run the Borough into the ground....a leadership system that Rods political predecessor, along with Labours Sue Bates and Liberal Democrat Mike Evemy decided, (in the face of considerable evidence that it was
not the leadership model the public actually wanted),
would be adopted by Swindon Borough Council because it was what they, as leaders of the three political parties wanted.....and they pulled it off!, with no discussion and no debate.
Rod might be doing a reasonable job now, but Bates didn't. What about Rods successor....will they?
The current system does not offer the guarantees Rod suggests and the current system does not enable every voter in the Borough to hold the leader individually accountable.
We'll see what happens at tonight's council but I can already hear the sound of a civic carpet being lifted and brush removed from a cleaning cupboard.....
...so what I'd like to start thinking seriously about is inviting Elected Mayors from other towns to come to Swindon and discuss their experiences. I'm interested in hearing Mayor Ray 'Robo Cop' Mallon explain how he has cut crime in Middlesborough by over 25% since he was elected....
...and how Mayor Stuart 'Hangus The Monkey' Drummond has enabled crime to be cut by over 20% in Hartlepool and whose local schools have just delivered their best ever exam results.
I don't have Swindons crime and educational figures to hand, but has Rod achieved comparable results in Swindon?, if he has it will make for a very interesting public debate, but if he hasn't.....